‘Idhayam Murali’ movie review: Atharvaa and gang charm through a breezy yet underwritten film

For a good part of my adulthood, I have embraced Ilaiyaraaja’s ‘Pottu Vaitha’ song from 1991’s Idhayam , often reminiscing about the remnants of a long-forgotten emotion. Talk about the magic a good song can create in a narrative; the song not only revealed to the audience the depths of the secret admiration Raja (Murali) had for Geetha (Heera), but it also became an emotional shorthand for a love that was felt too deeply to be spoken aloud. Now, Idhayam Murali comes in 2026, where Murali’s son Atharvaa stars as another man who buries his feelings rather than expressing them. And while the makers have repeatedly stated that the two films are anything but similar (they are set in the same world, and one pays homage to the other), the memory of ‘Pottu Vaitha’ helped yours truly set one simple expectation from Idhayam Murali — that it would have the honesty to remind me of that one singular intense emotion.